Is it too late to get Fey and Poehler to host the Academy Awards? Anyway, look for Hank Stuever’s review of the Globes within the hour, and join us Feb. 24 for another live blog experience for the Oscars. To steal Amy Poehler’s sign-off: “We’re going home with Jodie Foster.” GOOD NIGHT.

Upon receiving the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award from Robert Downey Jr.:

“There’s not gonna be a big coming-out speech tonight, because I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago, back in the Stone Age, in those very quaint days when perhaps a young girl would open up to trusted friends and family and coworkers and then gradually, proudly, to everyone who knew her, to everyone she actually met. But now apparently I’m told that every celebrity is expected to honor the details of their private life with a press conference, a fragrance and a prime-time reality show. And, you know, you guys might be surprised, but I am not Honey Boo Boo Child. No, I’m sorry, that’s just not me. It never was, and it never will be. … But seriously, if you had been a public figure from the time you were a toddler, if you had to fight for a life that felt real and honest and normal against all odds, then maybe then you too might value privacy above all else. Privacy. Some day, in the future, people will look back and remember how beautiful this was. I have given everything up there, from the time that was I was 3 years old. That’s reality show enough, don’t you think? There are a few secrets to keeping your psyche intact over such a long career. The first: Love people and stay beside them. … There is no way I could ever stand here without acknowledging one of the deepest loves of my life: my heroic co-parent, my ex-partner in love but righteous soul sister in life, my confessor, ski buddy, consigliere, most beloved BFF of 20 years, Cydney Bernard. Thank you, Cyd.”

“I want to thank all the thousands of people who are in our diplomatic services who put their lives on the line every day of the week,” said producer Grant Heslov. “We want to thank the folks in the clandestine services who don’t always get credit for the work.”

If you’re keeping score, “Les Miserables” won three Globes. “Argo” and “Django Unchained” won two.

The cast and crew of Les Miserables stormed the stage, accompanied by the triumphant “Do You Hear the People Sing?” (Yes. We have been hearing people sing Les Mis — in parody, in homage, in falsetto — ever since the film was released last month. We have been doing nothing but hearing the people sing.)

Anne Hathaway (who breathlessly announced that she’d forgotten to thank her manager the last time she was on stage) and Hugh Jackman had both already won acting awards earlier in the program, giving the film a strong showing at the Golden Globes.

‘Girls,’ the show which has been discussed to death, then harassed in its grave for even more prolonged discussion, won for best television comedy. The entire cast joined Lena Dunham on stage. Zosia! Allison! So adorable.

Dunham, still running high off her Best Actress nod, thanked her collaborators for showing her “The meaning of bravery and nakedness, both emotional and physical.”

The “Argo” helmer, snubbed by the Oscars, is given a rousing standing ovation and delivers a breathless, fast-paced speech in which he thanks “American hero” Tony Mendez and likens Paul Thomas Anderson — who was not nominated for “The Master” — to Orson Welles.

The eminent Jodie Foster exemplified everything that a public speech on a public stage should ever be: gracious, funny, heartfelt, pointed. It had humor (she kicked off her lifetime achievement thank you with an “I’m 50″ Sally O’Malley impression), and it teased the audience with tidbits of her oft-speculated private life:

“I guess I just have a sudden urge to declare something that I’ve never really been able to air in public,” she said. “I am single.”

In the end, her public speech celebrated the most elusive quality in today’s modern world: Privacy.

“Some day in the future, you will look back and realize how beautiful [privacy] was,” she said, explaining why she has chosen to remain close-lipped about her romantic life, even while using her speech to thank her ex-longterm partner, Cydney Bernard.

Foster spilled her guts out on screen for nearly fifty years, she said. And aren’t those all of her insides that you need to see?

The 50-year-old actor is about to receive this year’s lifetime-achievement Globe, which means they’ll play a clip reel of her career highs: Her big splash as a teenage prostitute in “Taxi Driver,” her iconic stare-down of Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs,” her directorial debut “Little Man Tate.” But we mustn’t forget her work opposite her most formidable acting partner. Not DeNiro. Not Anthony Hopkins. Danny Bonaduce. Here are Foster’s scenes from a 1973 episode of “The Partridge Family”:

On the other end of the spectrum, here are her two Oscar acceptance speeches, from 1989 and 1992:

Danes, who won for playing an addled CIA agent in “Homeland,” thanked the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for being “so insanely generous to me for so many years now,” noting that her first time on the stage was for “My So-Called Life” when she was a teeanger. She has a lifetime record of four-for-four at the Globes; she also won last year for “Homeland.” The Showtime series is the big TV winner so far this evening, with three Globes including best TV drama.

“I’m happy to be surprised,” he said in an unpredictably restrained and G-rated acceptance speech.

Post film critic Ann Hornaday said of the film, “ ‘Django Unchained’ breathes its own refreshing, occasionally demented, life into that time period, albeit in a pulpy, stylized cinematic language more akin to vampire-hunter cartoonishness than “Lincoln’s” more classical reserve.”

The Dowager Countess is riding in the back seat of an automobile to some location she does not appear to want to visit, and she also does not seem to like that Matthew’s mom got to ride in the front seat. Everyone is wearing mosquito netting hats wrapped about their heads.

“Thank you for this lovely blunt object that I will forever use as a weapon against self-doubt,” said Hathaway, now a mortal lock for the Oscar, when she reached the podium to collect her award for “Les Miserables.” Hathaway, well-rehearsed yet earnest, paid tribute to her co-nominee Sally Field, whom she thanked for defying type-casting by going from the Flying Nun to Norma Rae, Mama Gump and Mary Todd Lincoln.

We take this commercial break as an opportunity to pop in on the Granthams:

Mary is currently yelling at Matthew, in a restrained an British way, and we bet it has something to do with that inheritance that he is refusing to accept because he was a doink to Lavinia before he died. But he has to accept it or the Granthams will be impoverished.

After a superb, improvised introduction of feigned daffiness by Kristen Wiig and Will Ferrell, Lawrence collects the Globe for best film actress (musical or comedy) for “Silver Linings Playbook.”

“Oh what does it say? ‘I beat Meryl’!” Lawrence said, turning the statuette in her hand. (This was a very savvy invocation of a Bette Midler line in “The First Wives Club,” in which Goldie Hawn plays a well-awarded Hollywood actress.)

Costner won for the History Channel’s “Hatfields and McCoys” and gave a humble, somewhat somber speech about the “short walk” to the stage after a “long career.” He last won a Globe in 1991, for directing “Dances with Wolves.”

Composer Mychael Danna accepts the award by calling his wife the most beautiful woman in a room of starlets. Aww. “Life of Pi,” which Ann Hornaday called “a lyrical, extravagantly hued children’s pop-up book,” is nominated for 11 Oscars. Here’s a sample of Danna’s work:

The real-life CIA agent, played by Ben Affleck in “Argo,” took the stage with John Goodman. Don’t blame him for being a little rusty at public speaking; Mendez now secludes himself in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western Maryland and focuses on making art. Post reporter Michael Rosenwald wrote about him yesterday.

‘Homeland,‘ the dark, twisty saga of the cat-and-mouse relationship between a CIA operative and a turned U.S. serviceman, won the Golden Globe for Best Television Drama.

This show has become catnip for the country in general, Washington in particular, and the White House in the very particular: Barack Obama is a fan — he invited star Damian Lewis to the state dinner for Great Britain, and sat the actor at the head table.

The award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-series or Motion Picture made for Television went to Maggie Smith, for her role as the pickled, puckered Dowager Countess on British import “Downton Abbey.”

Smith wasn’t present to receive the award, but we like to think she would have reacted like this:

Co-hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler kicked off the Golden Globes, otherwise known as, Poehler declared, the evening in which “the beautiful people of film rub elbows with the rat-faced people of television.”

Their opening monologue was chock-a-block full with lovable zingers (We mock because we love because we you are our people) for nearly all the big names in the audience.

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler (Paul Drinkwater/AP)

To “Girls” star Lena Dunham: “If they are forcing you to do that nudity, you have to tell us. Just give us some kind of signal.”

To “Zero Dark Thirty” director Kathryn Bigelow: “When it comes to torture, we trust the woman who was married for three years to James Cameron.”

To Anne Hathaway, about her “Les Miserables” performance: “I have not seen someone alone and abandoned like that since you were on the stage with James Franco [at the Oscars].”

On Quentin Tarantino: “The star of all my sexual nightmares.”

(They also managed to force Daniel Day-Lewis to do the ET finger.)

Fey (in a blue sequined halter neck) and Poehler (in a deep red), seemed to fare better than British Ricky Gervais, who commandeered the past three years of the Golden Globes. Gervais veered between dodgy and boring — alternately dissing the stars he was supposed to fete, and toning his performance down to a somnolent beige.

As Poehler and Fey quipped tonight: “When you run afoul of the Hollywood Foreign Press, they make you do this show two more times.”

Adele’s mouth. The British singer will probably win best song (“Skyfall“), so prepare yourself for some playful, potentially vulgar verbiage in that Oliver-Twisty, north-London accent.

The best director’s speech. It’s likely that Ben Affleck or Kathryn Bigelow will win this award; will they stick it to the Academy for not nominating them for the corresponding Oscar?

New faces. The Globes have a history of honoring rookie nominees and breakout stars, especially in the television categories. This bodes well for Jessica Chastain (“Zero Dark Thirty“), Jennifer Lawrence (“Silver Linings Playbook“), Benedict Cumberbatch(“Sherlock”), Hayden Panettiere (“Nashville”) and Lena Dunham (“Girls”), although if anyone can swipe it away from Dunham it’s the ceremony’s co-host, Amy Poehler (“Parks and Recreation”).

Our colleague Katherine Boyle will have a fashion report up later this evening but, for now, an observation from us non-experts: We’re noticing a lot of red! (Also, for what it’s worth, Jessica Chastain and Rosario Dawson are wearing the identical shade of light blue; infamy!) Seacrest just finished interviewing Jennifer Lawrence, who’s in a hot-red Dior gown. Here are some more shots of red-carpet redness:

Tonight’s dual hosting duties represent the culmination of a decade of Amy and Tina partnerships.

Five other grand moments, in no particular order:

1) Baby Mama Tina is delightfully Liz Lemon-ish, Poehler is crass and crude — it was a platonic girlmantic comedy that paved the way for “Bridesmaids.”

2)Tina and Amy do Sarah and Hillary Tina Fey got the bulk of the credit for her cringe-y Sarah Palin impression, but the hugely pregnant Amy Poehler, straight manning it as Hillary Clinton, is part of what made it work.

4) Mean Girls Tina Fey wrote “Mean Girls,” but gave one of the best parts to her buddy Amy. Witness the awkwardness of the Cool Mom.

5) Off set, Off script The women on screen are comedy gold. What makes them platinum is the sense that their friendship continues when the cameras are off. Here, they auction off that friendship, at a Night of Too Many Stars benefit.

Attention: We have just our first Zooey Deschanel moment of the evening, in which she managed to up-twee her already astronomically high twee quotient by showing off her “thematic” fingernails, depicting a vintage camera and silver film. Et Voila:

@zooeydeschanel

Adorkable (not our word!) nail art is apparently a regular weapon in the Zooey Deschanel arsenal of cuteness. Witness the tuxedo fingers she wore last year.

5) Emma Thompson accepts as Jane Austen. Thompson, upon winning best screenplay for “Sense and Sensibility” in 1996, recited a fictional diary entry from Austen as if the English novelist had attended the ceremony. “The gowns were middling,” Thompson said. “There was a good deal of shouting and behavior verging on the profligate…”

4) Sharon Stone performs a “miracle,” winning for best actress in a drama for “Casino” in 1996. “And no one is more surprised than me, okay!” she said upon taking the Globe from presenter Tom Hanks. “Well it’s just, um…it’s a m — it’s…okay, it’s a miracle.” The erratic star’s wry moment of self-awareness was made possible by some classic favor-currying: The Washington Post reported in late 1996 that Stone sent handwritten notes to HFPA members ahead of the voting period, and during the ceremony two voters approached the publicist for “Casino” as the award was announced and said, “You see, we told you it was going to happen.”

3)Christine Lahti wins in the can in 1998. The “Chicago Hope” star was in the bathroom when her name was called; Robin Williams gamely vamped until she appeared, toweling off her hands, with a couple zingers of her own.

2) A tearful Ving Rhames gives his Globe to a befuddled Jack Lemmon, a co-nominee for best actor in a mini-series or TV movie, in 1998. “That is one of the nicest, sweetest moments I’ve ever known in my life,” Lemmon said after the audience delivered both awkward guffaws and a tearful standing ovation.

1) Elizabeth Taylor steals the show in 2001. The batty legend turned the presentation of the best-picture Globe into a charming ordeal. Her squeal of “‘Gladiator’!” still echoes in the culture, but one mustn’t forget her hilarious excuse for why she was having trouble with presenting the award: “I usually like to get them.”

Dan has outlined what the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association are doing in their ballroom tonight. What are we doing here tonight? (Here, being the Washington Post newsroom, eating Nutter Butters, waiting for the show to start).

We are here to see if Ben Affleck or Kathryn Bigelow take home the Best Director awards that the Oscars recently declined to nominate them for. We are here to dissect moments of sizzle and sass between co-hosts Amy Poehler and Tina Fey (we may, from time to time, pretend to be Amy Poehler and Tina Fey). We are ridding our brains of three years of Gervais-y-ness. We are taking bets on whether Anne Hathaway is going to sing.

The Golden Globes are shiny tchotchkes bestowed annually since 1943 upon wealthy makers of television and film by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association at an awards dinner where, according to the “Today” show, about 6,500 flutes of champagne are served. The HFPA is a non-profit collective of about 90 journalists who cover the U.S. entertainment industry for international publications from Sweden, Tahiti and nations betwixt. By licensing the network broadcasting rights of its awards show, the HFPA hauls in a considerable sum (about $7.5 million, according to its tax filings from 2010) and redirects some of that money to grants, scholarships and preservation programs in the realms of film and TV ($1.2 million among 40 different recipients in 2012).

The ceremony, though, is one big junket for filmmakers, studios and executives who rely on the prime-time exposure — an average of 16.8 million viewers watched last year, according to The Los Angeles Times, and a Globe win can goose an individual’s quest for greater name recognition and a distributor’s campaign for more awards and box-office sales. The HFPA, despite its philanthropy and a 1999 pledge to not accept perks or gifts from studios, has never been able to shake its reputation as a swag-thirsty band of pseudo-journalists (only four published articles per year are required of members). The most enduring example of the association’s legacy of corruption is the nonsensical awarding of Pia Zadora for her role in 1982’s “Butterfly” after HFPA members were flown to Las Vegas by Zadora’s businessman husband for an all-expenses-paid vacation.

What is billed as a major Hollywood event is, in terms of substance, quite minor. Not all HFPA members vote, and one might argue that some who do aren’t qualified to make such artistic judgments. The Oscars, on the other hand, or bestowed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 6,000 voting members, who actually practice the crafts they are honoring or were at one time meaningfully employed in the film industry. So why does Hollywood care about the Golden Globes? Because they equal money and fame. Why does the rest of the world care about them? Because it affords us a couple hours to turn our brains off and eat the equivalent of a Golden Globe: junk food.

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